Week 17: Pig farmer had referred to suicide as 'the only way out' of predicament

"This is my personal opinion," she said in response to questioning by defence lawyer Adrian Brooks. "I do not think he is in this alone."

She was not asked to elaborate on her remark.

Ms. Ireson, who worked as a prostitute in the skid-row neighbourhood in the late 1990s, said he gave her money and offered to take her to his farm in Coquitlam, B.C., in late 1998. She did not go with him.

She saw Mr. Pickton on a winter evening, wearing a Mac jacket and gum boots, sitting in a blue Chevrolet. He introduced himself as "Willie," she recalled. Mr. Pickton's middle name is William.

Gina Houston, a friend of accused serial killer Robert Pickton, arrives for a second day of testimony in Mr. Pickton's trial. Court heard Mr. Pickton discussed committing suicide with her during a conversation in his car, two days before he was arrested in February 2002. (John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail)

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She said she tried to arrange "a date" - in the car or at her room at the Cobalt Hotel. He wanted to take her to his farm, she said.

She told him she could not go to the farm that night and they made arrangements to meet the following week. Before she left, he told her he dated other girls from the neighbourhood. She could ask around and they knew who he was, she recalled him saying. He also said he liked to party and have a good time, she recounted.

Before leaving, he bought cigarettes and "munchies of some sort," and gave her some money, Ms. Ireson also said. She did not show up the following week. But two weeks later, she saw him again in the neighbourhood. She was looking for money for drugs.

Mr. Pickton gave her some money, which she used immediately to buy drugs. She got ripped off and went back looking for him. He gave her more money. That was the last time she had contact with him, she told court.

Later, 27-year-old Monique Wood, who was addicted to narcotics but not a prostitute, testified she went to Mr. Pickton's farm months before he was arrested in 2002 with the intention of doing her laundry. At the time she was living in a car behind a hotel in the Downtown Eastside.

When she arrived at his trailer, she did heroin in the bathroom and then fell asleep on his bed, watching a movie on TV. She woke up the next morning and went back downtown, leaving behind her unwashed laundry.

Over the course of the evening, he had given her $100. But she did not have sex with him, she said, adding that she never returned to pick up her laundry. Police found her clothing in Mr. Pickton's trailer after they took over his farm in 2002 and searched for evidence of murder.

Ms. Wood could not remember exactly when she went to the farm. She thought it was within a year before Mr. Pickton was arrested in February of 2002 and possibly within three months of his arrest.

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